Ever since I went down to an Openlab workshop last year I’ve been fascinated by live coding. From Wikipedia:
Live coding (sometimes known as ‘interactive programming’, ‘on-the-fly programming’, ‘just in time programming’) is the name given to the process of writing software in realtime as part of a performance.
I thought about doing live coding for myself ever since, so at fizzPOP’s latest hack session I thought I’d make use of massive screen and try a bit out for myself using a purpose-built program called Fluxus, which uses the Scheme programming language.
I had briefly looked at Fluxus before but had never actually built anything in it or even used Scheme before, so stuck to modifying one of the example scripts provided in the program. Here’s a video of my results:
You can see that an aspect of live coding is seeing how something is built, which could explain the decision to overlay the code over the visuals. I quite like it, some might not.
I’ll be attempting to do some more livecoding at the next fizzPOP hack session on March 3rd
Brumcon 9 is coming up this Saturday and I’ve been asked to give a short talk about fizzPOP and hackerspaces.
BrumCon is a regular event organised by Brum2600 regulars, featuring a wide variety of talks, discussion, demos and most importantly, alcohol. Incorrectly but neatly dubbed a ‘blackhat thinktank’ by NTK, The Register – ‘We have your water supply, and printers’, BBC Midlands Today – ‘Spooky’, By you lot as the UK’s biggest underground Hacker con, By hotel staff as ’scary’ but nice people and I’m scared I’d get my ass so electronically kicked.
We welcome all kinds of phreaks, geeks and other technologically interested people from all sides of the fence (as long as hats, badges and warrants are left at the door).
The entrance fee this year is 8 UK Pounds per delegate. Corporate packs are available that includes entrance, T-shirt and receipt contact us at brumcon9@brum2600.net to book.
Entry from 11am Talks Start 12 noon.
I think it’s interesting that I will have delivered a talk on the same subject but to two different groups. For example, for the talk at Eastside Projects I talked about it more as an artist led space wheras at this talk I’ll more than likely talk about it more as a hackersapce.
Anyhow, my presentation is from 12:45, the full schedule is available on the Brum2600 website
fizzPOP joins forces with Howduino to host a room full of people sticking together electronics, computer programs, cardboard and discarded junk items to make cool stuff do cool things in ways you never imagined. Join us and be part of the growing hacker and maker scene emerging around the UK.
Tickets for the 40 available places will be released on Friday 6th of November on a first-come first-served basis. Likewise for the workshops, which have 8 places each. Sign up here for notification when the tickets are released
Go to the fizzPOP Howduino wiki for full details of the event and to find out more about who’s coming.
All skill levels welcome – there will be something for everyone.
So, if you’ve ever wanted to learn the basics of electronics or just wanted to in a room full of people hacking away at devices sign up and be part of the action!
On Saturday 24th October I was at Space Studios in London to attend the Chiptune Marching Band workshop. I was really excited to go to this as I haven’t had a chance to dedicate my time to a single project with my breadboard and Arduino board.
After introductions we got down to making our noise making device. Essentially we were following instructions from a booklet, but more in depth explanations to how the different parts work were available if requested. My device had a light sensor which altered my sound, as shown below.
Once we finished ourdevices, which happened rather quickly, we took to the streets of Hackney to engage the masses in our noise!
There was a performance from pixelh8, Dave Giffiths (who I saw at OpenLabearlier this year) and others later on in the evening, but a slow train back home meant I had to miss it.
As usual this is exactly the sort of thing I’d like to see happening in Birmingham and the West Midlands. fizzPOP, which I run with help from Nikki and others, and 8Bit Lounge are going some way to filling this void and hopefully there’s some good news coming up in the next few days.
I mentioned in a previous post how I wanted to get more people doing social things that related to hacking, like going to the Micromouseevent last Saturday. I thought it’d be a great opportunity for people to see what else is available to the community and to link different micro communities that would eventually encourage more discussion and collaboration between the groups. Well, it looks like I’m not the only one with that idea. Several members of the group have been rather vocal on making the meetings more than fortnightly. My only concern with a move like that is that there’s a risk of exhaustion and people may feel under too much pressure to come. This is why I liked the suggestion of one member to have social meets in between the hacking sessions. In this way discussion can still continue and it may be a great way for new members to get better acquainted to other members.
Now the next task is to seek out of technical events in the West Midlands that we could go to and also to just chill over brew! If people interested in attending a social next week have a preference over day vote here
I'm a software artist based online and in Birmingham, UK. The work that I do looks at interesting ways in which to interpret data, technology and how it relates to art and the creative sector. For more information look at the Projects page or found out more About Me
